Another ^@**&?!! Ogre Article

There are two reasons for that title. The first is that, to the best of my knowledge, there are 3 other Ogre pieces in this issue of TSG. The second is that I'm trying to cover four different subjects. So I gave up looking for an appropriate title and just started writing.

The subjects I'm going to cover are:

Responses to Ogre . . . some of the better mail we got.

The GEV problem – a lesson in game design.

An upcoming game in the "Ogre universe," and notes on the Mark I, II, IV, and VI Ogres.

Possible rule revisions for the original Ogre game.

The Mailbox

One of the most pleasing things about Ogre, to me, was the volume and quality of the mail it generated. Letters, questions, and variants, and stories for TSG . . . it's been interesting to see what others have done with the Ogre concepts. About the only thing that hasn't come in is new art. Winch Chung's stuff is great . . . but it would be interesting to see other artists' interpretations.

Most of the mail shows a good deal of thought. I plan to steal the best comments and suggestions for future Ogre games . . . crediting the originators. Fair is fair. A sampling of the better mail to date:

Mark Ratner (who designed Space Marines, and says he'll be judging a large Ogre tournament at GenCon) sent in 3 pages of economic calculations on Ogres (he doubts they'll be cost-effective) and some excellent, if complicated, advanced movement rules. He also suggests (as have several others) that there should be provision for mobile howitzers. (Wait for the new game.)

Tracy B. Harms sent in a suggestion for a Mark IV with a starting MA of 4. We'd been playtesting something similar . . . but his way was more logical, and when you see the proposed Mark IV specs later in this article, the movement's done the way he suggested.

Greg Costikyan reviewed Ogre in his magazine Urf Durfal . . . called it "the ideal game to play whilst stoned." Okay, Greg.

Several people have sent in "perfect" defenses relying heavily on howitzers. I hate to say this, but my own Ogres go through those like a knife through butter. What strategy do you use to make six or seven howitzers work?

And a lot of people – too many to list – have pointed out that a defense composed of all GEVs wins the Basic Scenario most of the time and the Advanced Scenario too often. They're right. Which leads to . . .

The GEV Problem

In a nutshell: If a GEV fires on an Ogre and moves 4 away, the Ogre cannot kill it next turn, no matter what, if it has lost its missiles and either its main battery or its 3 movement. Therefore, a mob of GEVs can harry an Ogre to death, unless the GEV player gets over-confident and lets the Ogre cat-and-mouse his force to death. This is not good.

This had two causes. The first was the counter mix. The first edition was originally planned to provide 56 counters, in three distinct shades . . . light gray, dark gray, and white. But, at the last minute, we found we could afford to put in twice as many. And the printer fouled up . . . on the counter sets, light and dark gray look the same once cut out. So, instead of having 8 GEVs available, a defense commander has 22 . . . making some new strategies possible.

People still seem to enjoy Ogre. I like it myself. At this point, I can't rate it better than fair as a wargame. But it seems to be pretty good science fiction. It gives people a chance to exercise their imagination (and blood lust), and the mechanics are adequate to support the illusion.

But we still have the SuperGEV – and, worse, the Useless Heavy. In spite of the counter mix glitch, the GEV is, value for value, the best unit, and the heavy tank the worst. Under certain circumstances a couple of heavies can chew up an Ogre . . . but four GEVs can do it better. You don't really notice how good a GEV really is, though, until you take it in against a force of regular armor units. If six GEVs attack six heavies on clear ground, they kill the heavies and take no losses in the process.

The fact that the armor units weren't balanced against each other doesn't distress me much; they were (originally) intended only to balance against an Ogre. (But see below!) They are almost balanced, except for the Heavy. What happened? I made a mistake. (Yes, folks. Steve Jackson just admitted to a mistake. Hell will freeze over any second.) I'm owning up to it, not because I like looking dumb, but because I see a lot of game designs with similar errors. I doubt I'll ever do it again . . . and, if I point it out here, maybe you won't, either.

It's a question of cost and balance. Each of the armor units was given a balance of speed, defense, and firepower, roughly analogous to those of present-day units (except for the GEV, and we'll have those within a decade.) Then, having carefully balanced the units on a one-for-one basis, what did I do? I turned around and wrote the rules so that a Heavy "cost" twice as much as a GEV. Therefore, it's about half as effective.

Why didn't it show up in playtesting? Two reasons. (1) The game is, as I said, good science fiction. We were all aving so much fun that, if the Ogre won about half the time, we were happy. (2) Through one of those annoying glitches, all of the playtesters liked heavy tanks. Seldom, if ever, was a defense tried without some heavies. And they do work very well to clobber a weakened Ogre.

So why didn't the over-strength of the GEV show up in playtesting? We playtested a lot – literally hundreds of games – and we didn't always limit ourselves to the counter mix we planned to supply. It didn't show up because using all GEVs "seemed" like a dumb strategy. "Everybody knows" that a balanced force is more flexible. I remember trying an all-GEV defense just once, just as we tried an all-howitzer defense just once. It didn't work – at the time.

The moral here is: if you want to get all the bugs out of a game, playtest the dumb strategies. If you are doing a Civil War game, and your rules give the battle to the side that charges uphill against entrenched positions, you don't have much of a game . . . but if you playtest with Civil War experts, you'll never find out about it, because they'll never be stupid enough to try. Playtest the dumb strategies. That was the second lesson I got from Ogre. Make sure that the things you don't think should work, don't work. Or you've got some redesign to do.

Okay, enough preaching. Suffice it to say that the new Ogre game will have these bugs debugged. Yes, you heard me right. A new Ogre game.